Baten Kaitos Preview

By Rob Fahey Published 23 July, 2003

XenoSaga developer spreads the love to Ninty's funbox.

Cube owner? RPG fan? For the most part, you're out of luck then - aside from the re-release of the excellent Dreamcast RPG, Skies of Arcadia, the GameCube isn't exactly the platform of choice for RPGs. Even Square Enix' pledge of support, in the form of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle, is looking less plot driven and more combat focused every time we see it - not necessarily a bad thing, but hardly the meat that a real console RPG fan craves.

You might be pleased to hear, then, that a Japanese company called MonolithSoft has suddenly noticed the existence of the GameCube, and decided that it might be a nice idea to do a game for it. This is good news, because the last thing MonolithSoft did was the epic, sprawling and incredibly good PlayStation2 RPG, Xenosaga.

All-Star Cast

'Baten Kaitos' Screenshot 1

MonolithSoft, you see, is a Square spin-off company, whose games are published by one of Square's best mates in the software industry, Namco. Which is why Baten Kaitos, the forthcoming GameCube RPG from the developer, is worth getting excited about, even at this early stage - the talent behind many of Square's best loved games is hard at work on it, most notably scenario writer Masato Kato, the man who worked as story planner on Chrono Trigger and subsequently scenario planner on Chrono Cross, and directors Yasayuki Honne and Hiroya Hatsushiba, whose CVs include the likes of Star Ocean, Chrono Cross and Xenosaga.

So what do we know about Baten Kaitos? Quite a lot, actually. Although it was only announced in the past week or so, the game is due for release this December in Japan, and as you might expect it's a lush looking 3D RPG with anime-style character designs and a suitable fantasy world plot.

The story revolves around two key characters, Kalas and Xelha, who are brought together by entirely different objectives. Main protagonist Kalas is a 17 year old bloke out for revenge on the people responsible for the deaths of his father and younger brother, and he appears to be able to communicate with the spirits of the dead - while Xelha, a vaguely mysterious 17 year old girl, seeks to rescue the world from a crisis by foiling an evil plot of some description.

Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space

'Baten Kaitos' Screenshot 2

The game seems to be set on a number of continents which float in the sky, which can be travelled between on flying boats - sound familiar, Skies of Arcadia fans? - and there's all manner of mystic stuff going on involving something called the "Wing of the Heart", a strange type of wings evolved by the people of the floating continent which manifest themselves at times of tension (like battles, then). Kalas only has one of those wings, and in order to balance this out, he has a mechanical wing on the other side. We're not sure if they mean "balance" in a philosophical sense, or if it's just to prevent him falling over. We assume the former.

So far, so standard RPG fare - a fantasy world, some guff about the conflict between magic and technology, a teenage protagonist who's apparently a bit disturbed and is out for revenge, and a mysterious girl who's off to sort out some people hell-bent on bringing about a disaster. Actually, that all sounds rather good fun - but the really interesting thing is the battle system.

Baten Kaitos dispenses with the traditional turn based battle system as seen in Xenosaga, and instead opts for a card battle system, which calls upon you to use various cards to launch physical and magic attacks. In true card battling form, you'll be able to combine cards to create special attacks, field effects and so on. The card based system seems quite different to most we've seen before, however - you put your cards into play while the current action is still in progress, so battles ought to flow very quickly indeed.

Green Card

This isn't exactly a fresh direction for MonolithSoft - Xenosaga featured an incredibly comprehensive card battling mini-game which made Tetra Master look like Patience - but it's interesting enough to set the game aside from the pack. Besides, this is an incredibly lush-looking RPG with great graphics, an interesting world and story, undoubtedly wonderful music (Star Ocean 3 composer Motoi Sakuraba is doing the music) and rendered video (Mikitaka Kurasawa, responsible for video on the SIGGRAPH award winning Onimusha and various Resident Evil games, takes the helm here) and a development team with a fantastic pedigree. Rejoice!

Although, we'll rejoice more once we hear a European release confirmed. That said, Nintendo may be slow to release things in Europe, but with a few notable exceptions (Animal Crossing!), they do generally get here in the end. We may well see Baten Kaitos in Europe long before we see Xenosaga....

Picture of Rob.

About Rob Fahey

Rob Fahey is a former editor of GamesIndustry.biz who spent several years living in Japan and probably still has a mint condition Dreamcast Samba de Amigo set.

Read more articles from Rob by visiting the Rob Fahey archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 9 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Blerk #1 9 years ago

    Grrr..... /fumes over Xenosaga debacle

    This doesn't look too bad, though. Although I bet we never get to see it. :-(

    Shinji, IGN Cube is running a story this morning saying that Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has been put back to 2004, but there's no text associated with the headline. :-)

    You guys got any news on that?

  • ssuellid #2 9 years ago

    A US release would be good enough - have they announced one at all?

  • Alastair #3 9 years ago

    What ssuellid said.

    Fancy trying a card based rpg. Went back to the Lost Kingdoms review, but it wasn't good. Maybe I'll look in the bargain bin.

    Who am I kidding - I've got enough games to finish already....

  • FWB #4 9 years ago

    Is it better than Halo?
    Will it require 500 GBAs to be played?
    Will it ever see a European release this century?
    Wil Rizo hate it?
    Is this the end of the Cube?
    Should we invade Belgium?

    Come on, why aren't you answering the important questions here?

  • Blerk #5 9 years ago

    Maybe I'll look in the bargain bin.

    HMV were doing Lost Kingdoms for a tenner in the sale the other week.

  • Alastair #6 9 years ago

    Interesting, I think I have a £10 HMV voucher at home....
    :o)

  • otto #7 9 years ago

    Thanks Rob, good news indeed! This turned up out of the blue. But... I'm a bit confused about this card system. OK so it's not "turn-based" - does that mean it's "real time"? Will there be frenzied clickage involved? *prays not*

    Should be getting Lost Kingdoms 2 any day from skalmanxl so I'll be finding out I guess...

  • Chris Gardiner #8 9 years ago

    / Should we invade Belgium?

    Wait a minute. I'm invading Belgium *right now*. Where are you guys?

  • Nemesis #9 9 years ago

    Still a tenner yesterday Alas'. Give us a shout if you can't get there, we'll sort something out in the mail if you like. Then you can tell me what it's like, was tempted also!

    Er. Anyhow, very VERY interesting game, let's hope we get a chance to play it. If not.... /pats Freeloader disc.

  • Alastair #10 9 years ago

    Should be in Harrow Friday eve for the cinema - there's a HMV there so I'll pop in for a look.
    If I miss out I'm not going to be upset.

  • Nemesis #11 9 years ago

    Maybe we should kick in a forum thread regarding LK. See what people think...

  • FWB #12 9 years ago

    I'm on the border, Chris. There's some dude standing in front of my tank, specs, weird t-shirt with some sort of animal in a hat on it, waving a EU flag, shouting something about the union and GameCubes. Should I run him over?
    Edited by 1 at 23/07/03 @ 11:21

  • Chris Gardiner #13 9 years ago

    / Should I run him over?

    Better had do. The invasion's been crap so far - no casualties at all - and the top brass want some body count.

    Charge!

  • FWB #14 9 years ago

    K, he's flattened. Squirmed a bit, but once we'd distracted him with a copy of Skies of Arcadia 2 he didn't notice his legs being crushed. I'm on my way, speeding across the countryside of Belgium. I'm not sure where exactly I'm heading. Is Brussels worth taking?

  • otto #15 9 years ago

    Fools! You're about to run over your own fifth column!

    /dons tin hat

    edit - too late - ouch
    Edited by 1 at 23/07/03 @ 11:21

  • Chris Gardiner #16 9 years ago

    Oh no! Our first incident of friendly fire!

    /Fetches bicycle pump to unflatten otto

    "Is Brussels worth taking?"

    Pfft...dunno. They got any decent games shops there? Or sandwich shops - we don't have a supply line as yet.

    I'm currently digging a trench. Very important, trenches. Er...I'm in a field, and there's a cow, but that's it. Say, did anyone *tell* the Belgians we were invading?

  • otto #17 9 years ago

    Thanks Chris, much better now. You could take 'Sfizio' on Rue Archimede, they do great sandwiches.

  • FWB #18 9 years ago

    Good work, soldier, good work. You can never have enough trenches. I've got my engineers working on trench plans for the whole of Brussels now.

    Say, did anyone *tell* the Belgians we were invading?

    Some of the locals have been asking questions, but I'm not in a position to inform them. I've been told to leave it up to CNN.

    otto, sorry about the incident back there, but ya know, as they say, in order to make some pancakes you've got to flatten some dough. Or something like that. Anyway, be proud, be very proud. You'll get Victoria Cross for your actions: taking the enemy on single handed and coming out on top... well, to the side anyway... hmmm... maybe a bit below. Bah, doesn't matter, we'll get Tony to sort it all out.
    Edited by 2 at 23/07/03 @ 13:19

  • Zero Beat #19 9 years ago

    I hope you all know internet role-playing is bad for your health and won't make up for the lack of GOOD RPG's. And you'll go... blind.

  • Dizzy #20 9 years ago

    "Is Brussels worth taking?"


    Hey.. Belgium has plenty of beer (Weapons of Mass Delirium). Charge!

  • ray #21 9 years ago

    Hmm... looks like a RPG, smells like a RPG...

    Videos: opening, story, battle

    ...it probably is a RPG!

    Promising so far...

    Edit: fixed links...
    Edited by 3 at 24/07/03 @ 22:37